


Missives from Middle-earth

by LaurelCrowned



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:38:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurelCrowned/pseuds/LaurelCrowned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he writes, even if the fire is the only recipient of words addressed to far-distant eyes. A look at the letters - sent and unsent - of Gandalf The Grey, known in his youth as Olórin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A letter to Manwë

I sit vigil this night with wargs howling in the distance and can only hope they and their goblin-masters will not find us. Now I sit beside him and write, for I have done all else that I can.

No, that is a lie. I can still think, and so I picture in my mind the scene that plays out even now. They track the blood trail he left along the plains, following the splatter of red that fell with each wingbeat. We are not safe here tucked in this little valley. If they come close enough they may overhear his thrashing in the dark and the occasional soft, pitiable cries. I have not dared to light a fire - not with them so close - but I must soon if I am to hold them off.

Which hope should I dare? That they will not find us or that I can put them to rout without allowing them to harm my companion?

I could not leave him. They are not strictly my business and I endanger myself and therefore my mission with what I have done, but what else might I have chosen? He is one of yours and even here I find I am bound by love and loyalty as well as the demands of mercy. _I could not leave him!_  He is asleep now but fretfully so.

I cannot see your face in my memory and I cannot remember the  ~~taste~~ ~~scent~~  experience of the Airs of Taniquetil. I am not sure if I miss you, my lord. After the manner of our parting I am even less certain whether I am missed. 

I will tell you what did not miss! and that was a goblin’s arrow. It flew true into this young Eagle’s wing, and it was only the barest luck that I happened to be nearby to see him plunge screaming from the sky and crash to the ground.

I feared him dead until I came upon him. He was little more than a mass of broken feathers, beak gaping open and those golden eyes glaring at me as if he would eat me for his supper. He was maddened with pain and even I who speak the tongue of many creatures could barely understand him or make him understand me. At some length I was able to convince him we must flee further and he struggled into flight as I rode along beneath him, hand on my staff as my horse galloped across the plain.

His name is Gwaihir, or so I have gathered.

Sooner than I would have liked, he could go no further and fluttered to the ground in a mad tumble. It took some convincing, but he allowed me to draw the arrow from his wing. I cleaned the wound as best I could. He would drink little and ate nothing. By the time the sun had set, he had taken ill - poisoned, or so I must conclude.

I am not Radagast to know of healing birds, but I have tended him through these hours as he flapped and panted in delirium. I have tried to keep him still and quiet though he must be in great pain; he will suffer a worse fate should his attackers find us. I feel in my heart that he _must_ live. Something important hinges on it, though I do not know what it is.

\- is that howling getting closer? 


	2. A letter to Irmo

For all my cleverness and wisdom I knew not of those called Hobbits, named halflings by those not of their people. They are simple in their ways and I daresay would not venture farther than the nearest pantry should they not need to till the soil to fill it. Did I know of them in my younger days? I cannot recall.

Would that I might speak with you of them! Of their dancing and pipeweed, of the curly-haired children that peek from behind hills to catch a forbidden glimpse of me, for they are a suspicious and quiet folk who do not care for the doings of the Tall or mighty. Yet there was a bad winter some few years ago and I arrived with fear in my heart, not knowing what I might find amid the stories of starving wolves come down from the mountains and howling blizzards that lasted well into spring.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find them having a party! Yes, a party - and though they were fewer in number, their clothes hanging more loosely than they ought on a Hobbit, still they danced and laughed and welcomed spring. Still the children demanded I show them magic (only a little, as I must be a wizard for them, of course); and still their elders watched me from the hedges as if I were a wolf myself come to steal them away. Where Men so often see no further than the dust of the road and the grey in my beard, there is something in these Hobbits that sees more deeply than even I can say. They have a wisdom in them that I might name the wisdom of the Small.

So I lair tonight in the home of one by the name of Took, one who cared not for the disgruntled looks of her neighbors but only for what tales of other lands I might bring. And so I write to you from the unlikeliest of places, my knees nearly against my chest at this small table and the roof low over my head. Would that I might ask you to tell me the things I have forgotten and sing to me the Song that is theirs, which I cannot hear but can see unfold before me with eyes of flesh.

May they always endure. I should not like to see a world that has no Hobbits in it.

 


End file.
